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Inspiration or desperation? Whatever the motivation, Microsoft seems to be kicking its OneDrive campaign into high gear. Last week, it dangled the carrot of 100 GB of free cloud storage for two years in order to get people to sign up for Bing Rewards. This time, it's making a slightly different offer to entice Dropbox users to make the switch. And this time, for those who were irked by the limitations of the previous offer, the free space is available for anyone in the world to claim.

Dropbox is one of many companies that provides regular transparency reports, something it started doing a few years ago with a steadily increasing number of details. The cloud storage company has released its report for the second half of 2014 (July to December), and with it likewise comes an increase in details, the most notable of which is the inclusion of data on government data requests that come from outside of the US, making it more relevant for non-US users.

Dropbox has acquired Pixelapse, a service for creatives to collaborate with each other or manage their tasks. Unlike some recent acquisitions, this is not having any immediate effect on Pixelapse's service, with the company remaining open to new sign-ups and continuing to support current users. Says the company, the service's workflow and collaboration "experiences" will be ported over to the core Dropbox product over the next year or so. This is the latest of many acquisitions the company has made.

One of the most cited flaws of Windows' mobile platforms is the distinct lack of top and topnotch apps in the Windows Store. That apparently hasn't daunted Dropbox from catching up now. Better late than never, right? In the spirit of Microsoft announcing good things with Windows 10, including the availability, or at least the promise, of the same apps on both desktop and mobile, Dropbox is announcing that its app is now available for both Windows "modern" tablets and smartphones.

CloudOn has been acquired by Dropbox, the company has announced. It appears this was a talent grab, and under the acquisition -- the terms of which having not been revealed -- the cloud storage service will bring in 30+ new employees, as well as CloudOn's Israeli office. That latter office will be used by Dropbox as part of its hiring in the nation, the company's product, business, and mobile lead said in an interview recently. This is the latest of many acquisitions on Dropbox's part.

While the concept of "the cloud" has been around for more than a few years now, it still feels like the idea, and use, of "cloud storage" was adopted at such a rapid rate. And that makes sense, looking at how the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets has exploded in the last 7-8 years. As evidence of the importance of cloud storage these days, a new report has found that half of all mobile photographers rely on cloud services in some way for keeping their photos.

The next generation of cloud storage from Dropbox has been revealed - deleting your phone-stored photos after they've been uploaded to their webspace. There are two ways to look at this. One is that you're freeing up space on your smartphone by allowing Dropbox to hold them for you using Dropbox Carousel. The other is that you're trusting Dropbox to have a perfect copy of your files before deleting them from your phone, also trusting that they're only deleting said photos after the upload is complete.

As cloud storage solutions for your photos go, Dropbox is fairly popular. The enterprise-focussed solution is also consumer friendly, with photo storage being a fairly new angle for them. If you store your photos in Dropbox, you might be a bit bothered by the lack of viewing options outside of an iPhone or Android device via Carousel. For those who want more, Dropbox is delivering, and is introducing an iPad app as well as a web app for your photo viewing pleasure.

Dropbox and Microsoft might not seem like the most obvious of bedfellows, what with Microsoft already having its own OneDrive cloud storage service, but sure enough the two are teaming up to integrate Dropbox into the Office apps for iOS and Android. The pairing, which will be enabled when Microsoft pushes out new versions of its Office apps in a few weeks time, will open the door to direct access to files stored in Dropbox from the Office apps themselves, as well as embed Office editing directly into the Dropbox app. While it may seem counter-productive for Microsoft, it could make a big difference for Office adoption across Apple and Google's platforms.

Dropbox has added Touch ID support to its app for iPhone and iPad, putting a biometric barrier in the way of accessing files saved in the cloud storage system. The security addition, which builds on Apple's opening up of Touch ID as an authenticator for third-party apps in iOS 8, joins the existing PIN code lock which can optionally be enabled, demanding your fingerprint before it will let you browse through folders or upload new files. It comes at the tail-end of a PR war for Dropbox, as it attempts to distance itself and its security measures from a recent hack.